I'm always surprised how big the population of Indonesia is yet it seems culturally underrepresented in the world compared to a lot of smaller countries
Almost 300 million people but it rarely comes up in the news or pop media
Almost 300 million people but it rarely comes up in the news or pop media
It’s a Muslim majority country and very conservative, so a lot of the themes you’d find in American film, music, and literature wouldn’t make much sense there, and the media that has commercial potential outside of Indonesia is generally coming from wealthy households that don’t have much to do with how the average Indonesian really lives (Nicole Zefanya being the example that comes to mind).
Indonesians (at least the ones who speak English) are quite similar to Latinos in that they have a desire to be accepted into the English-speaking world not only personally but culturally. This can manifest in attempts to whitewash oneself to fit in, adopting whatever seems to be popular on English-speaking social media, leading to comparatively old trends propagating in these countries.
You saw the same thing with the Chinese and the Koreans back in the 2000s and both developed their own internationally-competitive culture industries, but those were both secular countries already well-integrated into the international system. I wouldn’t expect to see anything quite like that in Indonesia until at least 2030, when more of the digital natives come of age.
The Raid 2; The Night Comes For Us; The Shadow Strays....those should get anyone started going down the rabbit hole.
Korea definitely, but China? Seems like most of China's modern cultural export came from Hong Kong, and even that has stopped. Conventional wisdom is that the Three Body Problem couldn't be published today.
I'm curious what (homegrown) Chinese cultural products are internationally competitive today. China seems to be punching far below their weight, considering their population and their economic position.
You’re probably right. I’m just saying that 20 years ago the label of being “Made in China” meant something was cheap and bad. The business culture still isn’t great from what I hear but people are more comfortable than ever buying Chinese products and I’ve been hearing that more exchange students have been going to China to study.
The impression I had of China’s cultural exports was mostly from having seen more Chinese expatriates and immigrants openly engaging with e.g. Chinese music and fashion influencers. This wasn’t particularly common 20 years ago; I started noticing it around 2019.
The other thing I should note is that when I said internationally competitive I primarily meant outside of the Anglosphere. K-dramas are an interesting one because you can find women (it’s almost always women) of all ages from all over the world who watch them. Korean media is not unheard of in the Anglosphere but it is not nearly as popular as it is outside of the Anglosphere.
It’s possible China doesn’t have anything like this yet, and maybe it never will due to being comparatively censorious, but my perception is that sentiment towards China has improved quite a bit outside of the Anglosphere. I haven’t done reading on that; it’s just a hunch.
Productions like "The Legend of Hei" are of truly high quality and it's getting a decent reception in Japan for instance (not breaking the box office, but the fact it's there and talked about so no positively is already something)
They have very little in the way of exported cultural products ("The Raid" films?), are much worse in sports than would be expected based on population, spend relatively little on their military and don't do much in the way of regional power projection, and are growing economically but not remarkably, so there just aren't that many avenues for them to make international news.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/python-kills-woman-swallowed-in...
Many such cases.
Like, Indonesia (and together with Malaysia) makes up a really significant portion of all muslims. As an outsider it still seems like there isn't much cultural overlap- which seems like, even if Indonesian culture wouldn't reach Europe or the USA, at least it would reach to the middle east / north africa because of the the religious link.
I could have drawn some parallels between Catholics and South America, but there's already two Popes that have Latin American roots.
I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising though, I mean Christianity sure as hell got around too.
I live in Australia, and when I was growing up I thought the same, even though Indonesia are a very close neighbour of ours. Indonesia is featured quite a bit in our local news these days, and that together with lots of Aussie tourists in Indonesia, plus lots of Indonesian students studying here, has made us a little more knowledgeable about our neighbours.
I checked them for a few nations where I had solid on-the-ground knowledge, and the ranks and full-profile descriptions are straight up false. Usually propaganda involves lying by omission or hyperbole. In this case, it is just wrong.
This doesn’t fall under the category of basic geography. I can guarantee you that the majority of people you attended school with would not be able to locate Indonesia on a map, much less tell you about the religions practiced there.
It goes: Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh & Nigeria, in that order.
1: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_per...
Like how many of you can name a Chinese movie or pop star or TV show?
Lucy Liu isn't famous in China but she is in the US.
Not Chinese but recognizable because of HBO's The Warrior: Andrew Koji, Hoon Lee, Joe Taslim
(I cheated, my parents are from Hong Kong.)
Michelle Yeoh is Malaysian
Bruce Lee is American, baby
A lot of the others are Hong Kong celebrities, from before Hong Kong was returned to China
(Probably should've specified Chinese as people from China, specifically the mainland)
The fact that nearly all celebs you mentioned were famous from HK film seems to at least confirm that.
> Like how many of you can name a Chinese movie or pop star or TV show?
and wanted to say that Chinese people exist to westerners. You're totally right that China specifically doesn't export well for whatever reason.
In asia, China's culture is far more prevalent and gaining quickly.
Unless you want to include Hong Kong, but even then
Authoritarian cultures aren’t known for freedom of expression so it makes sense there’s little cultural export. The same thing applies to Islamic countries, the iconoclastic bent kinda puts a damper on visual art.